Painting the Darkness

In this season of transitions

as unhappy as they are necessary

with the cat of our children’s childhood 

put down for old age and then

our last child leaving home to seek 

his fortune

In this nightmare year of convulsive changes

my wife and I settle into our irrelevance

another too-short summer dissolving before our eyes

only so many more Christmases to go

My wife set to remodeling when we gave up our cat

and when our son left, she overhauled his entire

room, painting the worn hardwood floor

moving the bed from its corner

to beneath the window

adding a futon sofa

The sadness of my son’s absence

still drifts in the sunbeams 

about the ghosts of his melancholy

(he was quite properly bored and anxious 

here) but they’re dignified 

by the attention

and, honestly, it’s better than what it would

have become had we left it alone:

a museum of dust and inattention

borne of equal parts sadness and

fear

These changes being what they are

this wasn’t enough. Soon our broken

and dusty stairs were redeemed

as my wife’s mahogany brown floor paint

slid smoothly across the filled cracks 

A cool green to match the stair risers

overtook the stained yellowy plaster of the walls

the white trim glowing like redemption

a halo to surround and crown the darker colors

Our stories haven’t changed

laughter and tears alike

lie fixed beneath this now-new paint

and I wonder how many more 

families’ stories will play out

in this century-old pile

when my wife and I are gone

Someone will one day

paint over us
my silent prayer is they at least 

coordinate the colors 

and keep that trim 

gleaming.

Poem and photo Copyright © 2020 by Lawrence Roy Aiken.

The Happiest Sad Week of a Sad Year

A new week, a new month, a new season. So what else is new?

As of the first of this month, this also became the year our son moved out. I keep telling myself it’s a happy day because it is. Still, my wife and I will miss him. He’s in his early 20s, but we would have been content to follow the Italian model and keep him at home until he got married. 

That said, he wasn’t going to find his wife here in the sparsely populated San Luis Valley, let alone the kind of job that would have him certified as a journeyman in two states. In the middle of a pandemic panic-induced lockdown, he had three companies looking to bring him in to work. He could easily have gotten work here in the Valley, but it would have been a lateral move at best, and more likely a step back. It would not be a noble sacrifice on his part to stay here for his parents’ sake. It would be a foolishly squandered opportunity.

What most impresses me is how my son, in the six weeks since he left his last job, never bothered filing for unemployment. He had too much pride and no patience for the paperwork and jumping-through-hoops. He had enough in savings to pay his bills and still help his parents on the side. When all was said and done, he had plenty left to get him started again in Colorado Springs. 

When he moved back in with us three years ago, I told him to take the opportunity to “stack paper,” i.e., put something back from every paycheck. Well, bless him if he didn’t do just that.

He’s long been too big for these toys but we can’t give them up. These, as least we can hang onto.

 

As with the passing of our longtime family cat Otis in March, this was something that had to happen sooner or later, and if we mourn, it’s for us. I scolded myself as I watched him drive away, “If it’s this damned hard on you, make a bunch of money and move yourself closer!”

Maybe that’s just what I’ll do. It’s an incentive to finish writing this last book.

Road Kills

“Well, at least it was quick.”

Swiped from Steve the Vagabond and Silly Linguist's Facebook page.

On the Road is Jack Kerouac’s most famous book for whatever reason but I found The Dharma Bums more coherent and a better representation of what Kerouac was about. (As Truman Capote famously said of On the Road, which was written continuously on a long scroll of paper, “That’s not writing; that’s typing!”) 

Cormac McCarthy’s The Road works because the author’s odd, is-that-really-a-word? vocabulary enhances the Uncanny Valley unease of his post-apocalypse world. (Recall how this worked for the then-celebrated/now-forgotten 1980s post-apocalyptic Riddley Walker.) The ending was aw-gedouttahere unbelievable but after so many pages of relentless misery, you’ll take it. 

Still, for all that goes down, The Road wasn’t nearly as brutal as McCarthy’s 1984 masterpiece Blood Meridian. Those who have read that one recognize it as the most horrific horror novel ever. That it isn’t in the Horror section of the book store makes sense when you read it. McCarthy’s monsters-in-human-form are far, far removed from the turbo-charged Halloween beasties of Stephen King and Dean Koontz, et al.

The Corners We’ve Turned

...in the Year of the Panicky Demick. A not-so metaphorical State of the Apocalypse.

I would have had a post out days ago but Blogger refused to accept my photographs. I like my blog illustrated, like a magazine. It helps break up my text, provides a sort of sidebar while illustrating my main thesis and...look, I like my pictures, all right?

I’d wondered if this was the end. I was even thinking of making a post to that effect: “Blogger won’t take my image uploads, so stay tuned until I figure out another platform, which is probably never, because frankly this thing wasn’t that much fun to begin with. Just in case, and most probably, Goodbye.”

At last it occurred to me to attempt uploading photos using the new Blogger interface that I’d tried a month ago and found detestable, a load of change for change’s sake that didn’t fix the problems with formatting and required a learning curve figuring out where all the buttons were, besides. Sure enough, New Blogger took my photos just fine. I could try and learn to endure New Blogger, but it doesn’t work with my smart quotes plug-in.

Therefore, I’ll be flipping back and forth. Trust me, I don’t hate the big tech companies, Microsoft and Google in particular, because it’s cool.

Not even halfway through and we’ve seen the sun set on so much this year.

One of the sharpest corners we’ve had to navigate is the fate of the Blue Porch Kitty Committee. It’s a sad tale that requires its own post, but the précis is we’ve been brushed harder by the darkness than I expected this year, even knowing we had to euthanize elderkitty Otis, even knowing we’d been getting by far too long without incident regarding the outdoor feral colony that called our front porch home.

What was once a steady complement of nine cats, then eleven cats, is down to six. Angel has been so depressed by the poisoning deaths of his fellow toms Ginger and Spooky he refuses to re-enter the very yard he grew up in. We have some kittens in the garage that may yet grow up to fill out what’s left, but we’ve contacted the local cat shelter and we hope they get around to taking them away soon, as well as fixing as many of the un-fixed cats we still have around.

We found the opening through our foundation under our porch where the cats were getting in to have their babies. After a couple of winters without incident we’ve had to fish one dead kitten from the crawlspace, as well as the body of Ginger Tom, who needed a dark and lonely place to die. Heartbreaking and unsanitary are a heck of a combo. 

We already knew we had to renegotiate how we handled the feral colony we inherited with this house in 2016. We used to leave part of the skirting under our porch open so the cats would have a safe place to go in the event one of the many dogs running loose in our town made an appearance. Again, we were renegotiating. If they needed shelter they could duck through the cat door we’d installed in the side of the garage.

Last week all that wood latticework, much of it rotten or soon to be, was torn out. My wife raked decades of debris from under the porch, including one entire newspaper dated 1981. My son then went underneath to make sure both vent/access squares in the main foundation were covered. 

This bit of home improvement alone was a milestone. But the party being over for the Blue Porch Kitty Committee weighs heavy on our hearts. It’s not a mere metaphor; for years we enjoyed a festive atmosphere among the animals lounging about our porch. With the deaths of Ginger Tom and Spooky, who were kittens only two years ago, chasing each other around the poplars in our front yard, it’s as if the music stopped, the lights came on, and it’s cleanup time. Naturally, we’ll feed and take care of who’s left. It will never feel the same, though. Because it isn’t.

This is the core group as of yesterday evening, 30 May 2020. Angel, not pictured, blessed us with his presence for the first time in a while, but he refused to come into the yard. He used to be one of the most aggressive eaters and never missed a meal. I couldn’t even tempt him with chicken.

Today, the last day of May 2020 will be the last night my son spends here at our house. He’d quit a deteriorating situation just as the lockdowns were getting going this spring. My wife and I never thought to ask if he was looking for something else, especially as there didn’t seem to be anything else with all the restrictions in place due to the pandemic panic.

Besides, we knew boredom would get to him long before the lack of cash-flow became an issue. And so it came to pass he was interviewing via webcam with a company out of Kansas. They took all of one hour after the interview to make their offer. It’s the kind of respectable, living wage with benefits his father never knew, and he’ll be doing it at age 23. 

He will, of course, have to move back to Colorado Springs. The seats are out of the back of the van and we’re moving him there tomorrow. Cynthia and I will be empty nesters again for the first time since January 2017, when he moved in with us for lack of opportunities in the Springs. Now the polarity has reversed. He learned his trade here, but the money is over there. 

It is at once a cause for joy and mourning. I’m going to miss having my son around, even if we only talked to each other maybe twice a week because we both prefer to do our things at our computer workstations, his thing being electronic music composition and video game level modding. (He was also out of town a lot on his last job. Hell, out of the entire San Luis Valley. That says something right there. He could not stay.) His moving out the first time in 2016 as we left Colorado Springs for Monte Vista was a prime cause of my writer’s block that year. I didn’t know it until he moved in with us in Monte in 2017, and I was making coherent sentences again.

We’ve had some lovely pre-sunset Golden Hours, with a few post-sunrise Golden Hours that made me glad I was awake for them.

For what it’s worth, I do not expect to suffer from that kind of block again. I’m not the same man I was in 2018, let alone 2016, and thank God for that, too. Despite the melancholia stinking up this post it must be understood that, with the obvious exception of Blogger, all of these changes had to happen. Otis T. Cat was old and I would have had him put down sooner if I’d known then what I understand better now. We’d enjoyed a smooth ride with the feral cats outside for years. We knew we had to clean out and close up under the porch. The murders of Ginger Tom and Spooky, as well as the stillborn kittens, forced us to do something we should have done last year, if not the year before that.

Meanwhile, the great social experiment in how much suffering governing bodies can inflict upon vast populations in the name of a so-called emergency continues. It’s obvious this Chinese Coronavirus isn’t stacking bodies, nor will it ever outside of the nursing homes several governors and health officials have forced actual sick people into for safety. But the governors and the local health officials are enjoying themselves too much. So what if one business after another goes under? So what if families go bankrupt? 

So what are we going to do about it? 

I, for one, have had all worry and care about this stupid panic bludgeoned out of me. I’ve come to appreciate that there was much good among the bad this month, and that’s where I’ll put my focus. I got my old laptop up and running again. I finished reading some books I’d put off. Best of all, I solved the problem of integrating Agnes’ and Elyssa’s backstories and made massive progress with my novel. That’s a post all by itself which I hope to get around to tomorrow.

With respect to those who have taken personal hits from the Great Pandemic Panic of 2020, I can’t help smiling to think that, for all everyone’s hollering about in the media, including and especially the Internet, it’s been nothing more than a minor inconvenience for me. Passages and transitions, changes as painful as they were inevitable, are how I’ll remember this year. It just so happens that all the notable, life-altering corners turned since Otis T. Cat’s passing in March were turned this month.

I’m grateful to be here for it. That said, I’ve lost all enthusiasm with arguing about wearing a mask in public. I miss my cats; I’ll miss my son. I still have a novel to finish. I can only do so much. 

Don’t miss the kittycats for the trees. Back by poplar demand!

All photographs Copyright © 2020 by Lawrence Roy Aiken. All rights reserved.

Writerly Banter With Screenshots

Once again, arguing with screenshots about writing, because it’s an easy post.

This screenshot was posted on a Facebook page called Writers About Writing. Like a lot of these things, it serves as a jumping-off point for a self-interview and reflection on process:

I don’t have a giant crate, just a stack of clean hardcover journals in the children’s shrine bookcase downstairs, and a larger pile of spiral notebooks from back in the day that I’ve ripped the written pages from to transcribe digitally. I might use the notebooks if I ever find myself outside the house for extended periods—they exist to stave off boredom while waiting in doctors’ offices, auto repair shops, etc., more than anything. 

Where I live, the nearest doctor I can afford is 200 miles away in Colorado Springs. I can walk home from the auto shop here in Monte Vista. It is therefore likely the notebooks and hardbound journals will go unsullied until one of my children, or, more likely, someone from the thrift store does something with them. 

Gifts over various birthdays and Christmases. I’ve attempted making entries, but I prefer typing into a digital file I can amend.

As regards the Oxford comma, I like it. What others choose to do is up to them. Just write something I might want to read, all right?

A strong opinion? It’s robust. It’s not going anywhere. 

I’m pleased to report the last time I lost an unsaved draft was in 1987. I was merrily typing away at a story and was close to finishing. I leaned back in my chair, thinking of saving the file when the power blinked. Hours of what felt like the best writing of my then-embryonic career were gone. 

It took another week to finish the story and I still wonder about what I lost. Suffice to say I saved after every other sentence and printed multiple draft copies as a matter of course afterward. Losing text to power outages hasn’t been an issue since.

Image source unknown. I wish I was clever enough to make something like this.

As for novelty coffee mugs, I have a drawer full of them. Dear old Dad’s seen his share of birthdays and Christmases. I generally tend to use the largest one I can put in the microwave. I had a large one before that I couldn’t put in the microwave, but used frequently, because my office is upstairs. 

As for why I don’t keep the coffee maker in my office, it’s because I don’t want to spend too much time sitting down in here. ‘Tis a far, far better thing to get up once in a while and say hi to the other people living in my house than to stay inside, only coming out to use the rest room. If I have to explain this to you, forget it, don’t worry about it, you’re better off not knowing what you miss. 

I was going to take a photo of my coffee mug drawer but this old classic makes for a better segue, especially given how much I hate myself now for even thinking of taking a photo of my coffee mug drawer. Some things should be sacrosanct.

I’ve only suffered impostor syndrome once, and that was upon the announcement my first paid writing work in 1990. I shared the table of contents with Watchmen creator Alan Moore and French comics legend Moebius. It was a lame story and I was only there because the artist who drew it wanted to show off how much pull he had with the editor. That I was never paid again for my fiction writing until 23 years later seals the case.

It's in the lower center spotlighted Taboo #4 where you'll find a couple of recognizable names. This Diamond Comics' Previews came out on 11 May 1990. I took it to show off at the same party I met the woman Ito whom I've been married for 30 years this August.

I've read enough bad fiction since then, however, that I'm not at all hung up about it anymore. I laugh to think of the editor on Grace Among the Dead and how much she complained about my use of exclamation points. Yes, I did overuse them, but she missed everything else in her obsession. After a while, you could tell there was a point in which she gave up. I was on my own for catching errors.

After a while you learn to be grateful for your forced self-reliance. It’s more than mere cliché, it’s an eternal truth that if you want something done right, you must do it yourself. All of it. The great editors along the lines of Maxwell Perkins are no longer with us. We must learn a degree of self-awareness ordinary mortals rarely master. 

Last week I finished a book by a second-tier horror author published by one of the big five publishing houses. The book enjoyed rave blurbs from the likes of Clive Barker and other top-tier writers. The story was competently plotted, and a fine example of the nonsense you can get away with if your story moves fast enough. You can forgive cardboard characters and contrivances so long as something is happening.

What raised my eyebrow was the use of ALL CAPS!!!!! and multiple exclamation marks during violent confrontations. Sometimes the situation would escalate to ALL CAPS!!!! in italic. Sometimes multiple question marks were used to indicate the point-of-view character was really confused. Like, what??????

It was quite the very thing that would get you laughed out of an amateur press association back in the day. Yet here’s Mr. Tier 2 Horror Guy getting away with it, and within the auspices of a major publishing house. I think of those snobs who made their smuggy stink about self-publishing and indie publishing as it overtook the market. As if no one ever read a truly dreadful thing out of a Big Five publishing house, ever.

Which is all to say, What impostor syndrome? I’ve met worse frauds. Once again, thanks to the random People of Twitter for the blog fodder. We’ll do this again sometime.

Fresh Baked Crow with a Side of Optimism

Takeaways from the latest teaching moments of the Current Crisis.

I nearly deleted my last post for my profound embarrassment but the lesson is too instructive to waste. I’ll go even further and point out that I’d thought this media-driven mass hysteria would be done before the end of March. That I didn’t think a lockdown of businesses and what is essentially mass house arrest of the entire First World could be prosecuted so long speaks more to my overestimation of human nature than anything. 

It’s nothing to get bitter about, though. Just “take the L,” as the young folk say, except in my case the L stands for “lesson.” I’m not losing anything. Just the people who had jobs and businesses to attend to, and are now facing bankruptcy, foreclosure, permanent financial ruin, etc. 

Those people probably voted wrong anyway, which is why the media is keeping smugly silent about the millions of private disasters going on across the republic. If there’s one thing a lot of people have figured out, the media might not be the enemy, but they sure as hell aren’t your friend.

Meanwhile, it’s achingly apparent the people in authority declaring these lockdowns, with the occasional opening under capricious and stupid restrictions, are enjoying their power too much to give it up now or ever. Despite the occasional act of defiance on the part of small business owners, it now appears plausible some governors will attempt to cancel summer and fall, clear on through Christmas. That “second wave,” dont’cha know. We might have to do this for years until we get either a vaccine or an outright cure! Or wherever else the goalposts are moved.

They’ll get away with it, too. One lesson I’ve gleaned from this is it’s that people will put up with anything, even when they know it’s wrong, even when it hurts them. They will do as they are told and grumble most heroically about it later in hushed tones among their closest confidants. This is not a condition specific to Germans between 1933 and 1945. It is what it is. If someone ever writes an update to Charles Mackay’s indispensable Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, our Great Pandemic Panic of 2020 will make for a most illuminating chapter, with historical cross-references to back up the principles of mob psychology at work.

This rural crossroads town was barely hanging on when my wife and I moved here in 2016. The empty storefronts began filling up and everything was going great until, oh, mid-March of this year. Everyone say, “Thanks, Karen!”

The other lesson, naturally, is never to attempt predictions on when things like this will end. This pandemic may not be entirely a hoax, but it’s been certainly hyped. This is a case of mass delusion bordering on hysteria, and there are enough people out there high on this crisis to keep it going until it stops.

I’m still deluded myself to entertain some optimism, though. People are beginning to realize there’s a class of people in charge of things who don’t merely dislike the public they’re tasked with managing, but hate them and wish them harm. As a better blogger than I puts it, real change will not occur until the Dirt People understand the Cloud People don’t like them, not one bit. It’s getting a little more obvious than normal. But, then, this is the New Normal, isn’t it? It’s what they keep telling us.

The media act as amplifiers and speakers for this class, and they like to hear the peasants/hicks/what-have-you scream as they burn, too. Most people know better than to admit they trust the same people who brought us Gulf Wars I and II starring Saddam Hussein as the New Hitler, and with Weapons of Mass Destruction in the sequel, but they still do. A minority of a minority is blinking the scales from their eyes. Maybe not enough to make a difference, but it’s more people than the day before. There will be more tomorrow.

I’ve predicted the breakdown of trust in already fragile institutions, but bureaucracies are immortal, and the cognitive dissonance of the public, their ability to forgive and very literally forget once things start more-or-less working again, is how that immortality comes to pass. A corner has been turned, but if it takes us anywhere it’s to the glum resignation of subjects of the Soviet regime standing in lines for basic items. In our case, we even have handy decals on the concrete to show you where to stand, and arrows inside the store to direct your movement in the aisles.

If I’m optimistic, it’s because I feel something really messed-up, but also exciting is going to happen. I don’t know when, there’s no telling when, but  a new “normal” is coming. Given my experience so far, the safest thing to say is it’s not going to look like anyone thinks it is, and it’s a chump’s game to speculate.

Be cool, stay safe. The old rules of this fallen world still apply.

A timeless visual parable.

Through with This Flu 2: The Wrath of Normie

A few quick, fun notes. We’ll know how wrong I am in ten days!

I’m calling it. By the first of May most of the shelter-in-place, lockdowns, closures, etc., will be lifted. Some locales may try to hang on to their restrictions a little longer but I saw the writing on the wall where I am today.

After so many days of looking like the old, empty, impoverished rural town it was when my wife and I moved here in 2016, the traffic on the main drag Monday looked closer to 2017. Which is to say it wasn’t quite as busy as 2019, but 2016 to 2017 is a respectable jump for Monte Vista, Colorado.

Twitter was full of hatred and jeering for the lockdown protesters at various state capitols on Sunday. This contumely was so unilateral that I questioned whether the protesting side was allowed to express themselves at all. As it is, that’s not what I’m basing my prediction upon. People are out and about now. After one more weekend buttoned up and being told they’re stupid for questioning or resisting the manipulation, people apparently thought Monday afternoon was a fine day for a drive. I didn’t see anyone wearing masks in their vehicles, either, as I did on Saturday.

These aren’t people who make time to go to protests. These are regular people of the San Luis Valley, doing their back and forth through this crossroads town. What they’re doing out is their own business.

And when the bodies fail to stack up after the protests, when the hospitals fail to be overwhelmed after folks ride out into town to whatever’s open...well, a lot of people are going to be disappointed, apparently. Just wait until next time when it’s a real crisis. You’ll get your satisfaction, then.

Meanwhile, Drinko de Mayo is going to be extra-special double-secret lit this year. Just a feeling. We’ll all know in a couple of weeks.

I had a feeling I wasn’t pronouncing this right, and whaddya know....